


Through the Mirror Blue

by Penknife



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Mirrors, Winter, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-10 03:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19898887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: "Come and look in my mirror," she says.





	Through the Mirror Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleeperservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeperservice/gifts).



A dusting of snow lies white on the ground in Lorien, where snow rarely falls. Outside these woods it is a bitter winter, but here under the Lady's watchful eye, the air is crisp and cool but does not bite to the bone. In a chamber whose roof is made from the living roots of a towering tree, Gandalf has sat up half the night talking with Galadriel while the moon slowly climbs the sky. If its movement is slower than seems natural, he is not greatly surprised.

He tells her of his travels, the little news of the common people he visits as much as the doings of great lords and kings. There is a pattern in all of it, one that he is learning to read, and he places great stock in her advice, when she chooses to give it.

"Come and look in my mirror," she says, hardly the answer to his stories he expected.

He has seen the basin she uses for scrying, but has never asked to gaze into it, and she has never offered. Foresight seems to him a double-edged sword, as likely to dampen men's spirits unnecessarily as to warn them against preventable dangers.

"Very well, if you wish it," he says.

She walks barefoot without a care, the snow melting under her feet. His own boots crunch in the snow. The deep blue shadows of the trees in the moonlight make shifting lattices, the gold of the mallorn trees kissed with white.

The grove where her mirror lies seems quieter than the rest of the wood even in the quiet hours before dawn, the sound of the stream no more than a whisper. Galadriel fills a silver pitcher from the stream and crosses to the silver basin, where a little bird perches curiously. She smiles and holds out her finger, and the bird hops to it trustingly for a moment before it flies away.

"Come and see," she says, and pours the water into the basin. Gandalf approaches with care, aware that this is not a magic that will answer to his command, although he expects that overturning the basin would effectively end any vision it conjures. "I do not expect that will be necessary," she says, but she is smiling.

He ducks his head in apology. "You must forgive me if I am cautious with matters beyond my understanding."

"We live in times where that is wise," Galadriel says, a bit sadly. "But I think there is nothing to fear here for you. Only look into the water and tell me what you see."

The surface of the water ripples, throwing back starlight and moonlight. Above them the overhanging mallorn branches are black and gold against the starlit sky. He frames a wish for more, some clarifying glimpse of past or future, and sees only the night sky and the cool bright mirror of the moon.

"I see only stars," he says, after enough time has passed that he is certain that patience will bring no different result.

"That is as I thought," Galadriel says. Her fingers brush the water, sending the stars chasing each other in ripples across the sky. "This was made to answer the desires of elves and mortals, to resound to a music that has been sung for many ages, and hint at what still may be sung. But a note of the song itself cannot stand aside to hear the music."

"In your company, I will never run short of riddles," Gandalf says.

"Am I speaking in riddles? Perhaps that is one of my vices. Here is a plainer answer: this was never made for the use of the Maiar, spirits for whom past and future matter little. For an elf, or a dwarf, or a man, or even the hobbits you speak so fondly of, this is a window into other times and other places. For me, sometimes, it is a tool I can bend to see not only what my heart desires to see, but what my will chooses. But for you, I think it is merely a pool of water."

"I am not a river spirit who may lose track of passing centuries and never mind," Gandalf says, with a certain degree of irritation. "I am charged to learn from the past and to make plans for the future, and to do that I must learn to see time as my short-lived friends do."

"I think you mean that you have chosen to learn to see it that way," Galadriel says. "Your friend Radagast is as likely to know what year it is or to wonder how deep next year's snows will lie as the birds singing in the trees. Your friend Saruman prizes the perspective that an immortal life brings, and measures the turning years in what he has built or learned."

"So even among wizards you find me an exception?" The words are light, but he finds the question uncomfortable. He once expected his fellow wizards to see the world as he does, and he has become increasingly aware over the years that they are not of one mind.

"You are very much yourself. I think, on the whole, that is a good thing." She smiles. "And I think that you are frustrated at having steeled yourself to satisfy your curiosity, and having it after all remain unsatisfied. Would you know what I see when I gaze into the mirror for you?" 

"If I say no, will you look anyway, when I am gone?"

"Yes," she says, her smile a bit wry, as if acknowledging a fault in her they both understand.

"Then I prefer to know what you know."

She nods, her face sobering, and lifts her hand from the water. The ripples spread and still. For him, the surface is a perfect mirror, throwing back the light of the stars.

"The light of the Two Trees mingled silver and gold," she says, and for a moment she is sharper, brighter, simpler. "I ran beneath them laughing. I was the swiftest of all my playmates, and I knew that none of them could catch me."

"I don't remember," he says, although he knows there is some part of him that does, like a harp-string sounding too quietly to hear.

"And a Maia called Olórin stopped me, as I prepared to round on them in triumph, and said, 'You have won, and that is enough; I doubt you lose often, so I would advise you to learn to be gracious in winning.' I was not a child who much liked being instructed, but I heard the lesson, from you."

"If that is so, then you have gone beyond me," Gandalf says.

"I have changed, how could I not? Ages of this world have passed since we met under the trees in Valinor, and while my kind change more slowly than mortal men, we do change. Perhaps the Maiar change most slowly of all. But you are not as you were."

"I am as my task requires me to be."

"And as you have chosen to be." She smiles again, lighting her face. "I like my friend better as he is."

"These matters run too deep for me," Gandalf says. He is aware that he is more than the wandering mender of carts and finder of lost sheep, more even than the counselor putting words of what he hopes is wisdom in the ears of lords and kings. But he does not want to think of the face he sees in the most ordinary mirrors as a disguise. He is himself, and he has no desire to be otherwise.

"And we have talked until it is nearly dawn," Galadriel says. "It is time to let weary wizards sleep."

She cups a handful of water and raises it, and the little bird comes again to light on her finger and drink, and then darts away, a flash of white against the black sky turning to blue.


End file.
